St. Michael's College professor, artist advocates for 'invasivores'

A professor's work is inspiring a broader discussion about where living things 'belong'

Oct. 14, 2013

Artist Brian Collier gathers berries in late September from an autumn olive tree in Colchester. The St. Michael's College professor advocates for new (as well as time-tested) methods for controlling the spread of invasive species, like this one. / GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

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Free Press Staff Writer

Artist and St. Michael's College professor Brian Collier holds the berries from a non-native autumn olive tree in Colchester. Collier later ate the fruit — in keeping with his contention that new strategies are needed for the control of invasive species. / GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

Brian Collier, online

The artist’s website: http://briandcollier.net/Collier’s “Eat Local Invasives” project is a part of the ongoing Of Land & Local exhibition at Burlington City Arts, the Carving Studio & Sculpture Center in Rutland, Shelburne Farms Coach Barn, Vermont Artisan Designs Gallery in Brattleboro and the Fair Haven Welcome Center More info online at: http://bit.ly/1fpQuiR

Brian Collier in his studio at St. Michael's College in Colchester, where he is a professor. / GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

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His souvenir-sized cookbook includes recipes for a pate, for grilling and/or skewering; for vinaigrette marinades for the common starling.

Is artist Brian Collier serious?

Mostly.

To find out, this Burlington Free Press reporter, escorted by photographer Glenn Russell, paid a visit to Collier’s studio at St. Michael’s College, where he is an assistant professor.

The well-lit space is a hive of scientific-seeming charts of edible invasive plants, drawings of animal parts and glass-mounted specimens.

Antique calipers share the space with laboratory-grade electronics.

Brian Collier: When I was younger, I wanted to be a wildlife biologist – because I thought I’d be riding around on the backs of whales. Well, I quickly found out that wouldn’t be the case. But now, as an artist, I can ride on the backs of whales, and it’s totally valid.

BC: I have to be careful not to call what I do “science.” I mean, I try very hard to be factual, but it can be dangerous to label it as such. Some of what I do merges fact and fiction, and some of it’s improbable.

(Collier explains his starling recipe as “a possible solution” — a riff on Jonathan Swift’s 1729 “Modest Proposal” essay, in which the author suggests, with mock seriousness, that the Irish sell their young for consumption by the rich.

The cookbook’s title is “I’ll Have a Starling.”)

BC: It’s a quote from Shakespeare that was supposedly the inspiration for this guy, Eugene Schieffelin — a founding member of the New York chapter of the Acclimation Society of North America — who introduced the first starlings to North America back in 1891.

JBB: Was that the guy who said he was going to introduce to the New World every bird ever mentioned in Shakespeare?

BC: That’s the story. Whether this is actually fact or myth is debated a little bit. But it’s not important — because it’s such a great story. So many people have put it forward as fact. When I do my projects I meet with actual scientists — they’re telling this story, too. So..it’s good enough for me.

(Page 2 of 6)

JBB: What possessed Schieffelin to take on that project?

BC: It’s all tied up in the hierarchy of culture — the justification of ‘Manifest Destiny.’ Everything white and Northern European was considered good; and everything that was found in North America and “native” was bad.

The thinking was: “we’re going to bring these new birds over because they’re so much better than the native species that you have. And that was done on all different of levels, ecological, social, environmental — in all different ways that the domination of culture happened.

JBB: It was part of a larger invasion?

BC: Maybe a not-so-subtle comparison here is likening starlings to European colonists.

Glenn Russell: Is there even one other instance recorded of Schieffelin releasing any other bird?

BC: yeah – he tried to release several other birds but was unsuccessful with most of them.

GR: Oh, good —

BC: Hawfinches, bull finches, nightingales and skylarks

JBB: What about sparrows? They’re not native to North America, are they?

BC: They were introduced by another guy in 1850 at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. And they were brought here because it was known that insects were a part of their diet. People thought – a great idea – we’ll bring these birds over and they’ll eat all the problem insects. But, of course, insects are only 15 percent of their diet is insects. It’s just another example of a stupid person doing bad research.

Sparrows are another interesting species, but there isn’t this cultural and culinary history with them, so I haven’t done a project with them specifically.

(While doing graduate work at the University of Illinois and teaching at the Kansas City Arts Institute, Collier developed a project on the invasive Asian carp, also known as the “flying carp” due to its acrobatic prowess.)

BC: The whole region is just infested with these things. But they’re a great food fish. They’re actually pelagic filter feeders: They’re not a bio-accumulator for the toxins that are in the water — so there’re one of the safest fish you can eat.

(Page 3 of 6)

JBB: Like other fish that are low on the food chain —

BC: Which is a big problem, because they eat the bottom out of the food chain. So it takes food away from the juveniles of all the other fish. Despite that, they’re a really, good, safe delicious fish to eat.

JBB: Your work goes way beyond just being what I call an ‘invasivor’ — eating invasive species.

BC: Oh, yeah. I’ve had a lot of projects going on. One of them, a second one about starlings, get’s into “it’s possible – but…” Starlings have the capacity to mimic human speech, and they’re really good at it – as good as some species of parrot.

So my project is to go out and teach all the starlings in North America to say the name of the guy who introduced them there: “Schieffelin.”

(Collier’s online description of the project offers ways for the public to teach starlings the name of their benefactor: from shouting it at flocks, to installing audio devices at nesting sites.

The description concludes: “By following any or all of the strategies outlined on this website you can help change the starling from an unwanted invader to a productive environmental teaching tool.”)

JBB: You’re online; you have exhibits — how else do you present your stuff?

BC: One way is that I put together these performance art pieces in the guise of a scientific lecture; I do these slide presentations. My alter-ego is the president and creator and head archivist of SRNE (Society for a Re-Natural Environment).

So I present everything very flatly. I play the straight man to my own work. Hopefully people get the humor in it. But I always play it dead straight when I talk about it.

JBB: Yes. But “Collier” it sounds incredibly legit, as a trusted source.

BC: They’ve got the encyclopedia and the magazine: It rings with authority. I lucked into that. I have nothing to do with my own name.

We wander to a different part of the studio. On one shelf is a large glass jar, with a bird suspended in a clear fluid.)

JBB: Isn’t this a starling?

BC: That’s from an earlier versions of the project. It’s essentially pickled in denatured alcohol.

GR: De-natured and then re-natured?

(We encounter several glass cases that contain creature-like specimens, with accompanying classifications, descriptions and field notes.)

JBB: Are you gently mocking – or at least having fun –with these mis-characterizations of nature?

BC: There is certainly an aspect of parody in all that I do. I have a healthy sense of humor about it all. And I don’t trust anything. I’m a committed skeptic, generally.

JBB: Most good scientists seem to be, too —

BC: Oh, yeah.

JBB: Do you ever get folks taking you very seriously as an scientist or taxonomist?

BC: Well….what do you mean by seriously?

JBB: Do they miss the humor of it?

BC: Sometimes, yes. And that’s okay with me. I like people asking me dead-serious questions, and I’ll answer them as such, as well as I can.

(The conversation veers back to starlings.)

BC: A starling is an amazing animal.

GR: A bird is an amazing animal

BC: Just think about it. They put about 120 animals in New York, 100-whatever years ago. And they have exploded to become one of the most common birds in North America. They went into a niche that was not vacant. That’s amazing. They’re resourceful, smart animals. They fly in these beautiful flock formations. And they can talk!

Go on YouTube and type in “talking starling.” It’s amazing. They can talk really well.

JBB: Most people don’t like them much.

BC: But it’s not the bird’s fault. That’s my biggest message, when I’m working with all these species that are problematic. It’s not their fault; it’s our fault! It has nothing to do with the animal. They didn’t do anything wrong here. We’ve put them in a place where they don’t have the correct ecological checks and balances, and that’s wrong.

(Page 5 of 6)

So I’m just trying to help you understand them better.

GR: What about their self esteem?

BC:You’d have to ask them.

(Ponderous silence.)

JBB: So ... have you eaten starling?

BC: I have not. I sort of fell in love with them as an animal, doing all this research. That’s why I’m not using animals in this project (“Eat Local Invasives”), either. First of all, logistical problems.

Then some ethical problems — like encouraging people to harvest animals, versus plants. Animals can be hard to find and harder to get. Then you’ve got to kill them, and you have to worry about ... are people killing them “well,” or sort of torturing them or whatever. So I’m staying away from that.

I would eat a starling, but I never spent much effort in trying to catch them.

GR: Would you use more calories to catch a starling than you’d get in eating it? Like celery?

BC: Almost certainly.

Now, this silver, flying carp — I’ve eaten that. It’s tasty.

(The conversation turns to more general notions of “nature,” and the apparent virtues of biodiversity.)

BC: Nature and natural are these huge, unwieldy problematic terms that are so tied up in culture. Everything we see around here is influenced by humans.

And even before the Europeans, you could say the Native Americans — as soon as they crossed the land bridge — they started impacting the local ecosystem: they killed off all the megafauna for food; they started using fire as a way to transform the landscape.

There are all these different layers you can go into. It’s very, very complicated.

JBB: But it sounds like good fodder for art.

BC: Absolutely. What do artists do? They change the way we perceive the world that we live in, in some way.

I’m doing it in a way that some would find challenging; that is not easily recognizable as art. I use certain visual masks — things that look like they come from educational and history environmental education and science.

JBB: It looks like fun.

BC: I love doing this work. I’m never running out of material. It’s sad to say that, but I won’t. Because humans just go in and they do what they do. I will always have something to look at and work on.

(Page 6 of 6)

Like, starlings are considered an invasive — but the science on whether or not they are impacting biodiversity is pretty weak. There were a couple of studies that suggested that they were impacting populations of eastern bluebirds and northern flickers, but it’s kind of full of holes. It’s not good, solid research that proves that they’re doing that.

(Currier has been mulling the mostly-pristine image that the Green Mountain State enjoys)

JBB: Do you worry about bursting our collective, self-righteous bubble here in Vermont?

BC: It’s somewhat troubling. And it’s terribly destructive to our mission. Who do you need to get on board with this stuff? It’s people who are not a part of the club already. Who do you turn off the most when you are self-righteous and militant? The people who don’t agree with you.

I feel like hitting myself with a brick sometimes.

GR: As long it’s locally sourced —

BC: Sometimes we just need to relax. We need to let things happen. The ecosystem, it’s a a fluid thing, it will work itself out. We don’t have to always have to have our way.